Sudden Heart Deaths Tied To Heredity

Published 4:00 am, Tuesday, April 20, 1999

1999-04-20 04:00:00 PDT New York -- French scientists say they have documented that sudden cardiac death, like cardiovascular diseases, may be hereditary.

In a long-term study of middle-aged Parisian civil servants, French researchers have found that workers with one parent who died suddenly were almost twice as likely to die that way themselves. The risk was nine times as great if both parents died within an hour of the attack.

The workers also tended to die at about the same ages as their parents, Dr. Xavier Jouven, the lead author of the study, reported in the current issue of Circulation, a journal of the American Heart Association.

"This is a positive and significant correlation in the study, but the goal of the article was to provide information, not to make predictions," said Jouven, a cardiologist at Boucicaut Hospital in Paris.

Every year in the United States, about 250,000 men and women suffer a sudden cardiac death, with only about half of them suspecting they have cardiovascular problems, according to the American Heart Association. The attack may be the first sign of heart disease. As the name implies, many victims die before they can receive treatment.

For purposes of the study, Jouven and his associates defined sudden cardiac death as natural death that occurs within an hour after onset of symptoms, which are similar to those of a heart attack, whether or not heart disease was previously diagnosed in the victim.

The genetic link has long been suspected, but information has tended to be gathered retroactively in interviews with surviving family members, which may not be accurate.

The French study was based on medical information gathered through physical examinations and questionnaires administered to more than 7,000 men ages 43 to 52, from 1967 to 1972. Researchers followed them for an average of 23 years, including after retirement, tracking cause of death and correlating the information with history of parental sudden death. The researchers found that 22 (18.6 percent) of the 118 men who had sudden cardiac deaths had a parental history of that type of death.